page_title: Grime's Graves
section_title: Neolithic infrastructure
hierarchical_section_title: Grime's Graves / Mining method / Neolithic infrastructure
caption_attribution_description: English: Grimes Graves, near Thetford, Norfolk. Dating from the Neolithic age of 5000 years ago, Grimes Graves is one of the country's earliest mining sites. The remains of 433 mineshafts, pits, and spoil heaps pockmark the surface of the ground where ancient man dug for flints from which to make tools and weapons. 28 of the mines have been excavated and one has been left open to allow visitors to climb down into.
context_page_description: Grime's Graves is a large Neolithic flint mining complex in Norfolk, England. It lies 8 km north east from Brandon, Suffolk in the East of England. It was worked between c. 2600 and c. 2300 BC, although production may have continued well into the Bronze and Iron Ages owing to the low cost of flint compared with metals. Flint was much in demand for making polished stone axes in the Neolithic period. Much later, when flint had been replaced by metal tools, flint nodules were in demand for other uses, such as for building and as strikers for muskets.
  Grime's Graves was first extensively explored by the 19th-century archeologist William Greenwell.
  The scheduled monument extends over an area of some 37 ha and consists of at least 433 shafts dug into the natural chalk to reach seams of flint. The largest shafts are more than 14 m deep and 12 m in diameter at the surface. It has been calculated that more than 2,000 tonnes of chalk had to be removed from the larger shafts, taking 20 men around five months, before stone of sufficient quality was reached.
context_section_description: Such a large industry may have required supporting infrastructure. Assuming no more than two shafts were open at any one time, around 120 red deer may have needed to be bred and managed nearby, in order to provide a steady supply of antler as well as skin, food and other products that the miners would require. Alternatively, the mines may have been worked intermittently by local farmers, as happened in many early metal mines during the Bronze Age and the later Iron Age.
  Earlier flint mines in Britain such as Cissbury in Sussex were just as important as Grime's Graves, and there were many very local sources of flint which were exploited on the downlands. However, it is probably relevant that Grime's Graves were close to the very rich soils of the Fens, and forest clearance here would rely on local products.
  There was also extensive farming settlement during the Bronze Age, known from middens that infill the mouths of many Neolithic mineshafts. Animal bones from these middens show that the Bronze Age people kept cattle, which they milked, sheep and a few pigs. They also grew barley, wheat and peas.
caption: The remains of mineshafts, pits, and spoil heaps pockmark the surface of Grime's Graves
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